OAC Policy Forum

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A chance to raise and discuss questions affecting our commons; and to provide feedback from the members to the team of administrators.
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Thanks for sharing this, Kerim. I decided to boil down th elink's claims and came up with this list:

1. Ning are going to direct email all members.
2. The new ning.com site will combine all member information.
3. Ning could create a pyramid scam exploiting the work of network creators.
4. Shouldn’t Ning pay creators for their work rather than other way round?
5. Widget Laboratory was excluded for anti-competitive reasons.
6. Ning banned access to all PHP files.
7. Ning shut down creator forum and censors critical posts.
8. They banned some but not all porn.
9. Ning changed its slogan, removing ‘anything’ and changed it again.
10. Members get spammed to join other sites.
11. Ning will fail by trying to be MySpace or Facebook.
12. Ning has been erratic, compromised clients and eroded members’ trust.
13. Ning inflates its numbers.
14. We need a network creators’ bill of rights.

I would like to know first which of the above constitute a significant threat to the OAC. I know the Admins differ in their attitude to Ning. So I guess this would be a good place to have the discussion.

It is true that the Group 'Politics and religion' has been deleted. The only possible explanation is that whoever started the group has left the OAC, since the Ning software removes all their posts when they do. Do you recall whose group it was?

Philip, I believe that this group was 'featured' at the time because in the rapid initial growth of this site, an information page/introduction to the OAC had not been formulated. We simply needed somewhere for policy-type discussion to take place other than scattered in other groups and threads around the site. There are now plans for that information page to be made available (very soon), and perhaps then we can settle this group back in the list with the others as you suggest.

If any posts other than my own or Keith's were deleted from the same thread, I can only assume that it was some kind of glitch or error. It was NOT a deliberate or malicious act by any of the administrators trying to remove unwanted comments. I stand by any member's right to remove their own content, but no admin can/should/will remove another comment just because it proposes a different point of view.

Perhaps I am mistaken, but as far as I know, only two comments have been deleted, by their authors, because they were written in irony or sarcasm and misled some readers, or were mistaken responses to the former.

I suppose the open question is not whether people have to right to delete their own comments, as I imagine that would have widespread support, but whether the volunteer administrators--who, we should strive to remember, are working on our behalf--should remove highly inappropriate comments containing, e.g. extreme personal abuse, threats, messages solely of commercial intent, incoherent, lunatic ravings. If we want this, perhaps some specified procedure involving more than one administrator, should be considered.

I object to the OAC Policy Forum being the one featured group. In fact, I wonder if it should be a featured group at all. Why should administration and policy wrangling stand above the substantive groups. And given the tone of the policy discussions, is this where we want new members to go first? (NB I am not recommending that the Policy Forum be deleted, or that any statement be deleted, or that any word be deleted. NO DELETIONS. Is that clear?)

Now, if we had an information "group" that alerted new members what the possibilities of OAC are, a kind of introduction to OAC, including a list of administrators and their contact info, that might be justifiably a "featured" page.

I am not sure this discussion group has to be one of the first things people see when they hit the home page. Let them join, find out a bit about OAC and, when they explore Groups, this will be featured.